Solar Flares, Electromagnetic Pulses, and EMP Weaponry

Solar Flares, Electromagnetic Pulses, and EMP Weaponry

Solar Flares - The End of Life as we know it! Watch the Video by CLICKing HERE!

An EMP Attack could be more damaging than an Nuke Bomb! Watch the Video by CLICKing HERE!

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a burst of electromagnetic radiation. It results from a suddenly fluctuating magnetic field. An electromagnetic pulse creates a high-density electrical field and the resulting electric and magnetic fields may couple with electronic systems to produce damaging current and voltage surges. An EMP acts like a stroke of lightning but is stronger, faster and briefer. EMPs can seriously damage electronic devices connected to power sources or antennas. This include communication systems, computers, electrical appliances, and automobile or aircraft ignition systems, even pacemakers and ICDs (Internal Cardiac Devises). The damage could range from a minor interruption to actual burnout of components, depending upon the intensity of an EMP.

The fact that an electromagnetic pulse is produced by a nuclear explosion was known since the earliest days of nuclear weapons testing. During the first United States nuclear test on 16 July 1945, electronic equipment was shielded due to expectation of an electromagnetic pulse from the detonation. The official technical history for that first nuclear test states, "All signal lines were completely shielded, in many cases doubly shielded. In spite of this many records were lost because of spurious pickup at the time of the explosion that paralyzed the recording equipment.” During British nuclear testing in 1952–1953 there were instrumentation failures that were attributed to "radioflash," which was then the British term for EMP.

The effects of an EMP were not fully appreciated until 1962. At this time, the United States was conducting a series of high-altitude atmospheric tests, code named "Fishbowl." The nuclear explosion, "Starfish Prime," which was detonated in the Pacific Ocean almost 900 miles from Hawaii, caused an EMP that disrupted radio stations and electrical equipment throughout Hawaii, knocking out streetlights, setting off numerous burglar alarms and damaging a telephone company microwave link. The EMP-damaged microwave link shut down telephone calls from Kauai to the other Hawaiian islands. The Thor missile carrying the Starfish Prime warhead actually reached a maximum height of just over 680 miles, and the warhead was detonated on its downward trajectory when it had fallen to the programmed altitude of 250 miles. A high atmospheric explosion can cover extremely large areas, resulting in an extremely large EMP field over the entire area. The magnitude of a nuclear EMP over the United States would be much larger than the tests in the Pacific would indicate. For any particular weapon, the magnitude of the components of an EMP is roughly proportional to the strength of the Earth's magnetic field. The Earth's magnetic field over the center of the continental United States is about twice the strength as at the location of the Starfish Prime test. Starfish Prime caused an electromagnetic pulse which was far larger than expected, so much larger that it drove much of the instrumentation off scale, causing great difficulty in getting accurate measurements.

A few military ships and aircraft were positioned at the time in the region of the South Pacific Ocean near the Samoan Islands. This location was in an area known as the the southern conjugate region on the other side of the equator from the detonation. According to one of the first technical reports, "The visible phenomena due to the burst were widespread and quite intense; a very large area of the Pacific was illuminated by the auroral phenomena, from far south of the south magnetic conjugate area (Tongatapu) through the burst area to far north of the north conjugate area (French Frigate Shoals). . . . At twilight after the burst, resonant scattering of light from lithium and other debris was observed at Johnston and French Frigate Shoals for many days confirming the long time presence of debris in the atmosphere. An interesting side effect was that the Royal New Zealand Air Force was aided in anti-submarine maneuvers by the light from the bomb.” At Kwajalein, 1600 miles to the west, reports describe “a dense overcast extended the length of the eastern horizon, then a brilliant white flash burned through the clouds rapidly changing to an expanding green ball of irradiance extending into the clear sky above the overcast. Then rose great white fingers in the horizon in sweeping arcs turning downward toward the poles and disappearing in seconds to be replaced by spectacular concentric cirrus like rings moving out from the blast at tremendous initial velocity, then persisting in a state of frozen stillness. Then as greenish light turned to purple and began to fade at the point of burst, a bright red glow began to develop on the horizon until the whole eastern sky was a dull burning red semicircle. This condition, interspersed with tremendous white rainbows, persisted no less than seven minutes."

In 1963, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty to counter the considerable threat posed by EMPs. Unfortunately, the destructive potential of an EMP increases everyday as global society becomes more and more dependent opon electronics. According to W.H. Bowart and Richard Sutton, the U.S. Military has directed various Pentagon and Intelligence agencies, Corporations, and Universitites towards the development of EMP weaponry since the 1950's. Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons, be they sophisticated intercontinental nuclear weapons specifically designed to generate EMPs or relatively crude and cheap electromagnetic bombs, may be one of the most likely and potentially devastating means of terrorist attack in the near future.

EMPs are typified by fast rise times, high field strengths, and broad frequency content—factors that combine to make them lethal to electronic systems. The effect as similar to a lightning strike, but stronger. EMPs induce large voltage and current transients on electrical conductors such as antennas and wires as well as conductive tracks on electronic circuit boards. Pulses enter a system through a path designed to gather electromagnetic energy, such as an antenna, or even through cracks, seems, trailing wires or conduits, Regardless of how EMP enters a system, it damages components simply by overloading them.

ElectroMagnetic Pulses are not only caused by nuclear devises. Solar Flares result in EMPs as well. NASA has warned that a solar super storm could hit like “a bolt of lightning” and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security. A 2004 Congressional Study projected a stunning 90% fatality rate from such an attack, explaining that it would cause an almost immediate shortage of potable water, food and medical supplies, and eventually lead to an economic and societal collapse. According to Dr Richard Fisher, the director of NASA's Heliophysics division, in a new warning, states that a powerful solar storm could cause “twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina”. Large areas will be without electricity power and to repair that damage will be hard as that takes time.” The National Academy of Sciences warned two years ago that power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications could “all be knocked out by intense solar activity”. In December 2008, NASA discovered a giant, pole-to-equator breach in the Earth's magnetic field, unprecedented in size and threat. NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have recently acknowledged a surprising increase in the extent of Solar Activity. Predictions are for the height of this cycle of activity to reach its maximum sometime between mid 2012 and early 2013.

In 1989, solar flares caused major electrical blackouts in Eastern Canada. Loss of electricity lasted in some areas for six weeks. On September 1–2, 1859, the largest recorded geomagnetic storm occurred. Aurorae were seen around the world, most notably over the Caribbean. Aurorae over the Rocky Mountains were so bright that their glow awoke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning. Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed. Telegraph pylons threw sparks and telegraph paper spontaneously caught fire. Some telegraph systems appeared to continue to send and receive messages despite having been disconnected from their power supplies. From August 28th through September 1859, numerous sunspots and solar flares were observed on the sun. Just before noon on September 1, the British astronomer Richard Carrington observed a massive flare. According to Forstchen, author of the book, One Second After, “If such a storm hit our planet today, over 80% of the electrical generating systems in the Eastern U.S. would still be offline four years later”. Ice cores show evidence that events like those in 1859, as measured by high-energy proton radiation, occur approximately once per 500 years, with events approximately 20% as large occurring several times per century. Less severe storms have occurred in 1921 and 1960, when widespread radio disruption was reported.

On June 1, 2009, Air France 447, went down en route from Rio to Paris, killing all 228 aboard. The mystery of AF447 has been intensively investigated, but the blackbox was never found and the case was never solved. Investigators surmise that the plane flew through a thunderstorm, causing a temperature gauge to be coated with ice and thus give false readings which in turn caused speed sensors, known as pitot tubes, to give even more false readings, ultimately tripping the cascade of failures throughout the plane's computer systems that sent AF447 into the ocean. But there are a lot of thunderstorms in the South Atlantic, and pilots who do the Rio-Paris run routinely avoid them... When the Airbus went down it was passing through what is known as the South Atlantic anomaly, a California-sized crack in the Earth's protective magnetic field that normally protects us from solar EMP. Beginning the day before, on May 31, 2009, and continuing through the crash date, a large sunspot and along with it an enormous plasma filament had erupted on the Sun's northwest quadrant, the quadrant from which sunstorm explosions are likeliest to hit the Earth. Did a blast of solar EMP rocket through space, penetrate this giant crack in the magnetic field and fry some of the Airbus's electronic components, perhaps including the temperature gauge and/or pitot tubes?

Basically, the Sun gets angry every 22 years or so. The Sun has a natural cycle with a period of approximately 22 years, running from low activity to high activity and back to low activity. During the lifetime of each cycle, the magnetic field lines of the Sun are dragged around the solar body by differential rotation at the solar equator. This means that the solar equator is spinning faster than its magnetic poles. As this continues, solar plasma drags the magnetic field lines around the Sun, causing stress and a build up of energy. As magnetic energy increases, kinks in the magnetic flux form, forcing them to the surface. These kinks, known as coronal loops, become more numerous during periods of high solar activity. As coronal loops continue to pop up over the surface, sunspots appear, often located at the loop footpoints. As magnetic energy builds up, more and more magnetic flux is forced together. This is when a phenomenon known as magnetic reconnection occurs. Reconnection is the trigger for solar flares of various sizes, from "nanoflares" to "X-class flares". Granted, the largest flares my generate enough energy for 100 billion atomic explosions, but this flare occurs inear the solar surface.

As the solar magnetic field lines release a huge amount of energy, solar plasma is accelerated and confined within the magnetic environment. Solar plasma has been thought to be superheated particles like protons, electrons and some light elements such as helium nuclei, but in December, 2006, NASA discovered a flow of Hydrogen atoms, followed by Oxygen and Iron atoms. NASA did not release this information publically until more than two years after the event. Please note, these atoms have mass and if you remember basic physics, mass is affected by gravity!

The Sun constantly fires high-energy particles from its magnetically dominated surface as the solar wind. The interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) is a part of the Sun's magnetic field that is carried into interplanetary space by the solar wind. The intensity of the IMF effects depends opon the magnetic configuration of the Sun’s interplanetary magnetic field and the geomagnetic field of the Earth (the magnetosphere). Generally speaking, if both magnetic fields are aligned with polarities pointing in the same direction, it is highly probable that the Sun’s interplanetary magnetic field will be repelled by the magnetosphere. In this case, the IMF will slide past the Earth, causing some pressure and distortion on the magnetosphere, but otherwise passing without a problem. However, if the magnetic field lines are in an anti-parallel configuration (i.e. magnetic polarities in opposite directions), magnetic reconnection may occur at the leading edge of the Earth’s magnetosphere. In this event, the IMF and magnetosphere merges, connecting the Earth's magnetic field with the Sun's. This sets the scene for one of the most awe inspiring events in nature: the aurora.

These events occur frequently, so what’s all the hype? On December 22, 2012, the Sun, Earth, Jupiter and the center of the Milky Way become completely aligned. Solar Flares emit particles with mass, mass is affected by gravity. In 2012, the center of gravity will change, hitting its maximum shift on December 22, 2012.

NEXT BLOG: Solar Flares and 2012